That Hideous Strength (Space Trilogy 3)

"Exactly," said Filostrato. "It is folly to talk of peaceful revolutions. Not that the canaglia would always resist- often they have to be prodded into it-but until there is the disturbance, the firing, the barricades-no one gets powers to act effectively."

"And the stuff must be all ready to appear in the papers the very day after the riot," said Miss Hardcastle. "That means it must be handed in to the D.D. by six to-morrow morning."

"But how are we to write it to-night if the thing doesn't happen till to-morrow?"

Everyone burst out laughing.

"You'll never manage publicity that way. Mark," said Feverstone.

"No good, sonny," said Miss Hardcastle. "We've got to get on with it at once. Time for one more drink, and you and I'd better go upstairs and begin. We'll get them to give us devilled bones and coffee at two."

This was the first thing Mark had been asked to do which he himself, before he did it, clearly knew to be criminal. But the moment of his consent almost escaped his notice; certainly, there was no struggle, no sense of turning a corner. A few moments later he was trotting upstairs with the Fairy. They passed Cosser on the way. To think that he had once been afraid of Cosser!

At four o'clock Mark sat in the Fairy's office re-reading the last two articles he had written-one for the most respectable of our papers, the other for a more popular organ. The first was as follows:

"While it would be premature to make any final comment on last night's riot at Edgestow, two conclusions seem to emerge from the first accounts with a clarity not likely to be shaken by subsequent developments. In the first place, the whole episode will administer a rude shock to any complacency which may still lurk among us as to the enlightenment of our own civilisation. It must, of course, be admitted that the transformation of a university town into a centre of national research cannot be carried out without some friction and some cases of hardship. But the Englishman has always had his own quiet and humorous way of dealing with frictions and has never showed himself unwilling, when the issue is properly put before him, to make sacrifices much greater than those small alterations of habit and sentiment which progress demands of the people of Edgestow. There is no suggestion that the N.I.C.E. has in any way exceeded its powers or failed in consideration and courtesy; and there is little doubt that the starting-point of the disturbances was some quarrel, probably in a public-house, between one of the N.I.C.E. workmen and some local Sir Oracle, and that this petty fracas was inflamed, if not exploited, by sectional interests or widespread prejudice.

"It is disquieting to be forced to suspect that the old distrust of planned efficiency and the old jealousy of what is called ' Bureaucracy ' can be so easily revived; but the will of the nation is behind this magnificent ' peace-effort ', as Mr. Jules so happily described the Institute, and any ill-informed opposition which ventures to try conclusions with it will be, we hope gently, but certainly firmly, resisted.

"The second moral to be drawn from last night's events is a more cheering one. The original proposal to provide the N.I.C.E. with what is misleadingly called its own ' police force ' was viewed with distrust in many quarters. Our readers will remember that while not sharing that distrust, we extended to it a certain sympathy, but also insisted that the complexity of modern society rendered it an anachronism to confine the actual execution of the will of society to a body of men whose real function was the prevention and detection of crime: that the police, in fact, must be relieved sooner or later of that growing body of coercive functions which do not properly fall within their sphere. The so-called ' Police ' of the N.I.C.E.-who should rather be called its ' Sanitary Executive '-is the characteristically English solution. If any doubt as to the value of such a force existed, it has been amply set at rest by the episodes at Edgestow. The happiest relations seem to have been maintained throughout between the officers of the Institute and the National Police. As an eminent police officer observed to one of our representatives this morning, ' But for the N.I.C.E. Police, things would have taken quite a different turn.' If in the light of these events it is found convenient to place the whole Edgestow area under the exclusive control of the Institutional ' police ' for some limited period, we do not believe that the British people will have the slightest objection."

The second said much the same with shorter words, more exclamation marks, and in a more truculent manner.

The more often he re-read the articles the better he liked them. It wasn't as if he were taken in by them himself. He was writing with his tongue in his cheek-a phrase that somehow comforted him by making the whole thing appear like a practical joke. And anyway, if he didn't do it, someone else would. And all the while the child inside him whispered how splendid and how triumphantly grown up it was to be writing, with his tongue in his cheek, articles for great newspapers, against time, "with the printer's devil at the door" and all the inner ring of the N.I.C.E. depending on him, and nobody ever again having the least right to consider him a nonentity or cipher.

Jane stretched out her hand in the darkness but did not feel the table which ought to have been there at her bed's head. She discovered that she was not in bed, but standing. There was darkness all about her and intense cold. Groping, she touched uneven surfaces of stone. The place, whatever it was, did not seem large. She groped along one of the walls and struck her foot against something hard. She stooped down and felt. There was a platform or table of stone, about three feet high. And on it ? Did she dare to explore? But it would be worse not to. Next moment she bit her lip to save herself from screaming, for she had touched a human foot; a naked foot, dead to judge by its coldness. To go on groping seemed the hardest thing she had ever done, but she was impelled to do it. The corpse was clothed in some very coarse stuff which was also uneven, as though it were heavily embroidered. It must be a very large man. On his chest the texture suddenly changed-as if the skin of some hairy animal had been laid over the coarse robe; then she realised that the hair really belonged to a beard. It was only a dream; she could bear it: but it was so dreary, as if she had slipped through a cleft in the present, down into some cold pit of the remote past. If only someone would come quickly and let her out. And immediately she had a picture of someone, someone bearded but also divinely young, someone golden and strong and warm coming with a mighty earth-shaking tread into that black place. At this point she woke.

She went into Edgestow immediately after breakfast to hunt for someone who would replace Mrs. Maggs. At the top of Market Street something happened which finally determined her to go to St. Anne's that very day. She came to a place where a big car was standing beside the pavement, an N.I.C.E. car. Just as she reached it a man came out of a shop, cut across her path to the car, and got in. He was so close to her that, despite the fog, she saw him very clearly. She would have known him, anywhere: not Mark's face, not her own face in a mirror, was by now more familiar. She saw the pointed beard, the pince-nez, the face which somehow reminded her of a waxworks face. She had no need to think what she would do. Her body, walking quickly past, seemed of itself to have decided that it was heading for the station and thence for St. Anne's. It was something different from fear that drove her. It was a total revulsion from this man on all levels of her being.

The train was blessedly warm, her compartment empty, the fact of sitting down delightful. The slow journey through the fog almost sent her to sleep. She hardly thought about St. Anne's until she found herself there.

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE PENDRAGON

BEFORE she reached the Manor Jane met Mr. Denniston and told him her story as they walked. As they entered the house they met Mrs. Maggs.

"What? Mrs. Studdock! Fancy!" said Mrs. Maggs.

"Yes, Ivy," said Denniston, "and bringing great news. We must see Grace at once."

A few minutes later Jane found herself once more in Grace Ironwood's room. Miss Ironwood and the Dennistons sat facing her, and when Ivy Maggs brought in some tea she did not go away again, but sat down too.

"You need not mind Ivy, young lady," said Miss Ironwood. "She is one of our company."

There was a pause.

"We have your letter of the 10th," continued Miss Ironwood, " describing your dream of the man with the pointed beard sitting making notes in your bedroom. Perhaps I ought to tell you that he wasn't really there: at least, the Director does not think it possible. But he was really studying you. He was getting information about you from some other source which, unfortunately, was not visible to you in the dream."